242 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND CHAP, x 



say more, but find myself much inferior to the task. I 

 shall therefore content myself with saying that their taste led 

 them into two materially different styles, as I will call them. 

 One was entirely formed of a number of spirals differently 

 connected, the other was in a much more wild taste, and I 

 may truly say was like nothing but itself. The truth with 

 which the lines were drawn was surprising ; but even more 

 so was their method of connecting several spirals into one 

 piece, inimitably well, intermingling the ends in so dexterous 

 a manner that it was next to impossible for the eye to trace 

 the connections. The beauty of all their carvings, however, 

 depended entirely on the design, for the execution was so 

 rough that when you came near it was difficult to see 

 any beauty in the things which struck you most at a 

 distance. 



After having said so much of their workmanship, it will 

 be necessary to say something of their tools. As they 

 have no metals these are made of stone of different 

 kinds, their hatchets especially of any hard stone they can 

 get, but chiefly of a kind of green talc, which is very hard 

 and at the same time tough. With axes of this stone they 

 cut so clean that it would often puzzle a man to say whether 

 the wood they have shaped was or was not cut with an iron 

 hatchet. These axes they value above all their riches, and 

 would seldom part with them for anything we could offer. 

 Their nicer work, which requires nicer-edged tools, they do 

 with fragments of jasper, which they break and use the sharp 

 edges till they become blunt, after which they throw them 

 away as useless, for it is impossible ever again to sharpen 

 them. I suppose it was with these fragments of jasper 

 that at Tolaga they bored a hole through a piece of glass 

 that we had given them, just large enough to admit a thread 

 in order to convert it into an ornament. I must confess I 

 am quite ignorant of what method they use to cut and polish 

 their weapons, which are made of very hard stone. 



Their cloths are made exactly in the same manner as 

 by the inhabitants of South America, some of whose work- 

 manship, procured at Rio de Janeiro, I have on board. The 



